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much wrong with a Celtics fan who owns a border collie. Border collies are smaller than rough-coated collies like Lassie. I can’t write it in Dog’s Life or say it aloud in my own house, but the border collie is undoubtedly the most intelligent and trainable breed in the world. Trained border collies understand seventy or eighty commands and control flocks of sheep by staring at them with their eerie, hypnotic eyes. Owning one is a sign of good character. And he brought Leah home at exactly eleven.
    The next time I saw Jeff Cohen was on Thursday evening. He and his dog, Lance, were warming up for the ring in a grassy area by the parking lot of the Lincoln Kennels. The town of Lincoln is a rural suburb with lots of high-tech industry executives who build discreet glass and wood palaces in the forest, join the Audubon Society, buy Labs and golden retrievers, and have them trained and boarded at pretty, pastoral Lincoln Kennels. Jeffs dog looked at home in the country setting, and in spite of the muggy heat that would make most of the dogs lag, this one was keeping his strange, piercing eyes fixed on Jeff, who held himself rigid.
    “Jeff looks a little nervous,” I said to Leah as I killed the engine.
    “He’ll be all right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
    “We have to exercise them first,” I said. “Soiling in the ring is an automatic disqualification. Then we check in. Then we warm them up. Just a little heeling, sits, a couple of finishes. Nothing that even looks like real training.”
    I’d insisted on grooming and bathing the dogs. A lot of people don’t bother just for a fun match, but Marissa always maintained that turning up with a grungy dog tells the judge, the dog, and everyone else that you have no respect for the sport. For an indoor trial, I always dress up, and for an outdoor fun match like this one, I wear new jeans and a decent-looking shirt. Leah had French-braided her hair into an elaborate series of demure plaits and exchanged her multi-exercise outfits for a pair of jeans and a plain blue T-shirt she’d borrowed from me.
    Ten minutes later, when we’d registered and fastened on our armbands, we spotted Rose Engleman sitting in a folding chair near the Utility ring, which, like the other rings, was simply a roped-off rectangle in the middle of the field. Perched in Rose’s lap, Caprice was evidently assessing the competition. A couple of other people with real obedience dogs—a sheltie and a golden—were talking with her. Heather and Abbey, though, had set up their chairs so close to the ring entrance that they were all but in it. Between their chairs was a silvery gray polypropylene crate. A thermos and two cups sat on top of it. I assumed that Panache, Heather’s poodle, was inside.
    We’d have settled down near Rose, but it is against my principles to station a malamute anywhere near an obedience ring. No matter how perfectly the malamute behaves, something about the scent or appearance of the breed constitutes an unfair distraction to the dog who’s working. We did say hello to her, though, and then, with only about ten minutes until our turns, we found an unoccupied place on the little hill above the rings, where we spread out a blanket, gave the dogs some water, and dampened their bellies to help them cool off.
    “If it starts raining, she’s going to break on the down,” I told Leah, who really belonged in Pre-Novice where Kimi would never have been off lead. In case you don’t train dogs—really? why not?—maybe I should add that on the down, the dog is supposed to hit the ground and stay there. Standing up or moving around instead of staying is optimistically known as breaking, but, in truth, I hoped that Kimi didn’t shatter to pieces by leaping out of the ring or pouncing on another dog. Kimi belonged in Pre-Novice, too, but Leah had spurned my advice. And want to hear something unfair? Since Kimi was registered to me and I’d put titles on Vinnie, Rowdy, and lots of